In light of Walter Benjamin’s Aesthetics and Philosophy of History, a discussion of the theme of Memory, Truth and Monuments is structured in three steps. First, we aim to understand the important, interconnected concepts of destruction, barbarism and catastrophe. Second, these concepts form the basis for discussing memory and monuments, related less to the construction of monuments than to artistic and political interventions that prompt a re-evaluation of memory in connection with meaning. Finally, we look at how the truth, as the content of those actions, reveals its artistic value in a material and historical perspective. There will be references to monuments in Brazil — which symbolize the colonial age — as well as recent polemic interventions related to these, as a motivation for discussion.

The London Aesthetics Forum is sponsored by the British Society of Aesthetics